How to Render 4K Video Faster in Premiere Pro — Slash Your Render Times
“26min video needs 68 hours to render. Need faster rendering!”
“2.5 hours to render a 12min GoPro video in 4k on Windows 10 — Too long!”
Slow video rendering/exporting in Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects is a pain in the neck, despite the amazing effects they finally present. How to render videos faster? This page is to help you learn the ropes. You will get a total of 10 ways to speed up video rendering in Premiere Pro, ranging from the fastest render settings to using a GPU renderer.
1. Transcode Video Before Editing
If possible, shoot video in faster video rendering codec formats. Or transcode video to intermediate codecs like ProRes, DNxHD, DNxHR, CineForm, etc before loading it into editors.
Record or transcode the video in the exact resolution and frame rate that you plan to save even after post-production. For example, to make a 4K video for uploading to YouTube, use cameras allowing you to just shoot in 4K. Or both your editor software and CPU/GPU hardware will bear much of the burden of video upscaling or downscaling calculation.
Transcode video when your camera compresses video in long GOP, or key-frames won’t work properly. The higher the value of GOP, the slower the key-frames seeking is, and the longer it takes to import and decode video. As a result, video previewing stutters. When I-frame seeking is not accurate or not working, the video might be full of glitches. Re-encoding video is the fastest way to solve it.
To re-encode the video with codec, resolution, frame rate, GOP, and more parameter adjustments, VideoProc Converter is a good tool to use, for being both easy and fast. The unique Level-3 full GPU acceleration algorithm allows you to maximally benefit from Intel/Nvidia/AMD’s hardware.
Better still, you can use its built-in video compressor to reduce the file size of large/long videos. Besides, you can do some simple edits in VideoProc to speed video rendering up even further: cut unwanted clips, trim and merge to rearrange video, add text or watermark, etc. Basic color correction and video stabilization are available as well.
2. Upgrade Hardware
Make sure you are rendering on a computer with at least 6 cores and supporting hyper-threading. An 8-core processor would be better. GPU renderer would help accelerate both your video rendering for preview and export a lot, especially when there is color correction and you add special effects. Exporting (video encoding) is a process of large amounts of data calculation, which happens to be what GPU excels in.
Better use SSD for faster file reading speed. It won’t directly speed up your video rendering, but the whole video editing of large 4K files would be much smoother. A minimum of 16GB of RAM is required for HD video rendering/editing, while 32GB is for 4K.
3. Enable GPU Rendering
To enable GPU rendering in Premiere Pro, the processor or graphics card itself should natively support the hardware acceleration technology. Premiere Pro allows you to use Mercury Playback Engine CUDA and OpenCL for faster video rendering. But when it comes to video encoding, only GPU acceleration powered by Intel QSV is supported. Plug-in is needed for using Nvidia NVENC. Check your hardware information to see if you can maximize the use of your CPU or GPU to render video faster.
* Note that Mac OS X v10.6.3 or later is required for CUDA acceleration in Premiere Pro.
4. Modify Render Settings in Premiere Pro
Use special effects or transitions that support GPU rendering. You should know that only parts of effects in Premiere Pro can be accelerated in rendering by CUDA.
Render video in lower resolution. For example, render in 1/2 or 1/4 in Premiere Pro instead of full size. Other editor software like PowerDirector allows you to preset video rendering resolution, frame rate, etc.
See the following effects in Premiere Pro that support GPU rendering.
Additional tips for faster 4K rendering in Premiere Pro
· Make 4K proxies to edit more efficiently, then disable them for final rendering.
· Consider rendering previews at 1/2 or 1/4 resolution before final rendering at full 4K.
· Use the “Render and Replace” feature to speed up CPU-intensive formats.
· Close other Adobe apps if possible when rendering to maximize resources.
· Consider third-party render speed plugins for Premiere Pro for 4K footage.
FAQs about Fast Video Rendering
Do I need to render before exporting Premiere Pro CC?
Render video if you:
1. Need a smooth playback of video sequences full of effects.
2. Will export video in the same codec used in the preview file.
What decides video rendering time?
Answer from Adobe community professional Rick Gerard:
“Rendering time depends entirely on workflow, source footage in the composition, frame rate, effects, and your system.”
What would help speed up video rendering?
Both CPU and GPU affect video rendering speed. Others like hard drive and RAM space are also important. Large amounts of RAM are especially needed when dealing with large 4K and long-GOP videos.
Is a graphics card a big deal for video rendering on a PC?
A graphics card supporting hardware acceleration is crucial for faster video rendering and exporting, especially when rendering and encoding UHD 4K files, over 8 million pixels. How does GPU affect render time? Three main parts during video editing — decode, render and encode — in the picture above can be accelerated using GPU, cutting down on rendering time, from dozens of hours to minutes perhaps.
Is video rendering more CPU or GPU intensive?
That depends on whether you using a GPU renderer or a software renderer. Video rendering could be more GPU intensive if you enable CUDA/OpenCL acceleration. And the graphics card’s ability might be the bottleneck in deciding how faster your video rendering could be if you ever add effects or do color corrections.
Final Words
By now, you should have a clear set of strategies for expediting your 4K video renders in Premiere Pro. 4K footage places huge demands on your system and the software, often resulting in time-consuming export times that kill your creativity and productivity. But as we’ve outlined, it doesn’t have to be that way. With some optimizations to your workflow, editors can achieve 4K video rendering speeds that stay right in line with their creative pace.